Perhaps it would be appropriate to recall the words of Vannever Bush from his report to the American President immediately after the Second World War: ‘Basic research leads to new knowledge. It provides scientific capital. It creates the fund from which the practical applications of knowledge must be drawn... Today it is truer than ever that basic research is the pacemaker of technological progress... A nation which depends upon others for its new basic scientific knowledge will be slow in its industrial progress and weak in its competition in world trade, regardless of its mechanical skill.’ (Vannever Bush in Science: The Endless Frontier, A report to the President (of USA) on a programme for postwar scientific research, July 1945. Reprinted July 1960. National Science Foundation. Washington DC, p. 19.)

There is a prevalent misconception in India that basic research is a luxury that can be indulged only by a few rich nations of the world. As the above statement of Vannever Bush amply demonstrates, basic research is an absolute necessity if we really are to prosper.

Unfortunately, often in our country, doing basic science is equated with ‘ivory tower research’ and intense pressure is put on short-term goals. It is ignorance that makes people feel that
(i) a developing country cannot afford investing in basic research and (ii) answering fundamental questions requires a lot of money. Both these concepts are wrong. As long as we do not develop our own technologies in fundamentally new directions, we will remain mere followers. Secondly, more than large sums of money, answering basic questions requires unconventional think-
ing and encouragement from those around.

The prevailing trend now seems to be to encourage projects with megabucks rather than doing good science. A bad project with populist aims and ‘political correctness’ has a better chance of getting funded than a good one on understanding the basic mechanisms. At the other extreme, we are all busy doing ‘xerox research’, copying the best of the worst from the Western laboratories ‘indigenizing failure’ (as you so aptly term it!). Science has stopped being the art of the soluble and has become the practice of the possible in our country. No wonder even after 50 years of independence, India is yet to bag a Nobel prize in science. One wonders how people like Chandrasekhar and Khorana would have fared had they stayed in India.

I have seen many a good scientist either dropping out of science or leaving the country because of pressure to do short-term, populist research. A good Indian scientist (particularly one who does not have the ‘right’ connections) should not feel that the best place to serve his country is from outside India. Unless steps are taken to encourage basic research by scientists whose only qualification is a creative mind, the following words may indeed become very true for those who want to do it: ‘It has been a sad but enlightening experience to recognize that the universality of science does not imply unbiased acclaim for scientific truth and a true history of science, and that if one has neither powerful alliances nor influential sponsors, he should learn to do science for its own sake and not be depressed by lack of appreciation’ (E. C. G. Sudarshan in Pions to Quarks).

Encouraging basic research will go a long way in turning capable scientists from doing ‘politically correct’ or ‘fashionable, band wagon’ research to those who can generate the scientific capital necessary to place our country in the forefront. I am really glad that in the last few years, Current Science has done much by discussing many of these issues. I hope that someday this constant hammering from journals like Current Science will help us to change our attitude towards the type of science needed in this country.